Im new to the whole betta showing thing, but recently i have been more interested. i have successfully bred bettas in the past but not with the intent to show. (now i may change my objective to showing and selling show quality)
- Here is my question, can someone explain to me the whole rose tail thing? is there a class where they would be accepted or are they unwanted throughout the beta community?

the reason i ask is because i just got a HMPK female that would go perfect with the male HMPK i wanted to breed, but she has few flaws. im looking for some honest criticism =]

she is a red dragon, i love the 6 rays in her tail (hard to see in this pic)

her anal point isnt as nice as i would like but the male i have her paired with is perfect and should help that issue (hopefully?)

she has long ventral fins, not showing in this picture (they are not split at the ends)

also her dorsal and caudal fin dont meet, but again her mail partner has better fins and should be able to breed out this fault (again, Hopefully?)

She's actually not a Rose Tail. She simply has a messy edge to her fins. Rose tailing is when they have so many branches (cannot be attained with 6 and under rays) that the tail folds over itself giving the appearance of a rose. And then Feather tailing is even more branching! So much that it doesn't even reach the ends and then starts to look like feathers sticking out of the tail end.

I'll demonstrate with my boy Jarvis. He's a DT with a short caudal but he's actually a Rose tail with a few Feather tail traits. Notice how the tail is folded and ruffle like, that's rose tailing. When the tail is still flat but has some pointy or weird shaped edging then it's just messy edging which can be fixed through breeding. It's not the shape of the edge that denotes a RT but how many rays and branching they having to make it look ruffly.

You would get a kind of half and half mixture judging just the tails. If he had a super clean edge you'd get about 1/4 fry with clean edging, 1/4 with messy edging and 1/2 either mixed or something from up the genetic pike line

I personally avoid rosetails (bad at shows, bad for tailbiting, weighs down the fish, X factors). Since she does not have too many rays and is probably not even a rosetail though, you couple breed her with a hmpk with good edging and then work the rosetailing out as you go.

She has a lot of branching and can quickly go to RT if not careful in breeding. She does have a "ratty" edge that would be faulted at a show. We want a smooth half circle for the outside edge of the tail. She looks more like a HM with a sloped anal.. but I'm not a pk breeder. And my personal experience is the spawns favor the females a LOT. So expect to see her form in most of the offspring. You breed the best females you can.. and the males will improve along with them.